In recent years, in a semiconductor device manufacturing process, semiconductor substrates such as a silicon wafer, a compound semiconductor wafer and the like become larger in diameter and thinner in thickness. A thin semiconductor substrate having a large diameter may suffer from a warp or crack during a transfer operation or grinding process. Thus, in the semiconductor device manufacturing process, the semiconductor substrate is reinforced by bonding a support substrate to the semiconductor substrate. Then, the reinforced semiconductor substrate is transferred or subjected to a grinding process. Subsequently, the support substrate is delaminated from the reinforced semiconductor substrate.
For example, a first holding unit may hold the semiconductor substrate while a second holding unit may hold the support substrate. Then, the support substrate may be delaminated from the reinforced semiconductor substrate by vertically moving a peripheral portion of the second holding unit.
In the method of the related art, the peripheral portion of the second holding unit is held only at one point and is moved vertically. Thus, force acts on the substrate only at one point in a delamination process. Accordingly, there still exists a need in the related art to improve the efficiency of a delamination process.
Such improvement of efficiency may be required even in a manufacturing process of an SOI (Silicon On Insulator) or the like, which accompanies delamination of substrates.